With 12,000 molecular samples, useful to biologists and pharmacologists, Caen University’s combinatorial library has, in the space of 10 years, become one of France’s most dynamic. At a now mature age, the library has recently moved to new premises and has concluded a partnership with the Institut Pasteur, which is sure to accelerate its future development.

Storing and organising, in the same location, thousands of molecular samples available for research work by the lab’s scientific partners. Such is the mission of the UCBN combinatorial library, born in the late 1990s. Its founder, Professor Sylvain Rault from the CERMN (1), has remained to this day the director of the structure, located since January 2009 in brand new premises within the University’s Faculty of Pharmacy. “The combinatorial library is rather like a computerised boutique, today offering over 12,000 different products. I created the lab simultaneously to its counterparts located in Strasbourg and Paris. Few people believed in it.” However, in the space of 10 years, the structure’s reputation has developed. Over and above the quality of the products it stores, the scientific community particularly appreciates the diversity of molecules it offers, the quality of it samples, along with their “drugability”, in other words, their capacity to be developed into medicinal drugs.

A sampling robot

In 2003, the Caen-based laboratory was actively involved in the creation of a national CNRS combinatorial laboratory, consequently multiplying its partnerships. “We have signed around 25 partnership agreements over the last 5 years, the most recent, in June 2008, being with the Institut Pasteur,” recalls Aurélien Lesnard, a Caen University engineer and “combinatorial librarian”. A contract with such a prestigious research centre (2) is sure to boost the lab’s activity. “We have already supplied Pasteur with some 3,000 samples, either on plates (3) or in bottles. The very first scientific results are promising.” Fifteen responses to tests performed on samples from Caen have proved to be of relevance, “Which means that they could well lead to a genuine research process,” explains Sylvain Rault. For 2009, the combinatorial library will also very probably be doubling or even tripling quantities supplied to this partner. “Our relationship with the Institut Pasteur is extremely encouraging. And it falls within an overall context of ever-increasing demand from testing researchers.” As early as next March, the combinatorial library will be equipped with a robot, subsidised by the CRUNCH (4), to help prepare sample plates 10 times faster than any technician can. For the library, more stock means increased economic repercussions, via patents and publications to which it has contributed or invested an interest in. A development potential which leaves Sylvain Rault optimistic with regards to the creation of a new jobs in the coming years.

(1) Normandy Study and Research Centre on Medicinal Drugs / EA 4258 University of Caen, Lower Normandy

(2) Focusing on health, in particular developmental biology, genetics, infectious diseases and neurobiology.

(3) Prepared solutions for use by a biology lab robot.

(4) Centre Régional Universitaire Normand de Chimie (Normandy Central University Chemistry Laboratory).

Sylvain Rault & Aurélien Lesnard
UCBN Combinatorial Library
Tel: 02.31.56.68.01
Website: CERMN

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